Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (911 page)

The creation by omnipotence is in its place, is a truth, only when all the phenomena of the world are derived from God. It becomes, as has been already observed, a myth of past ages where physical science introduces itself, where man makes the determinate causes, the
how
of phenomena, the object of investigation. To the religious consciousness, therefore, the creation is nothing incomprehensible,
i.e
., unsatisfying; at least it is so only in moments of irreligiousness, of doubt, when the mind turns away from God to actual things; but it is highly unsatisfactory to reflection, to theology, which looks with one eye at heaven and with the other at earth. As the cause, so is the effect. A flute sends forth the tones of a flute, not those of a bassoon or a trumpet. If thou hearest the tones of a bassoon, but hast never before seen or heard any wind-instrument but the flute, it will certainly be inconceivable to thee how such tones can come out of a flute. Thus it is here: — the comparison is only so far inappropriate as the flute itself is a particular instrument. But imagine, if it be possible, an absolutely universal instrument, which united in itself all instruments, without being itself a particular one; thou wilt then see that it is an absurd contradiction to desire a particular tone which only belongs to a particular instrument, from an instrument which thou hast divested precisely of that which is characteristic in all particular instruments.

But there also lies at the foundation of this dogma of incomprehensibility the design of keeping the divine activity apart from the human, of doing away with their similarity, or rather their essential identity, so as to make the divine activity essentially different from the human. This distinction between the divine and human activity is “nothing.” God makes, — he makes something external to himself, as man does. Making is a genuine human idea. Nature gives birth to, brings forth; man makes. Making is an act which I can omit, a designed, premeditated, external act; — an act in which my inmost being is not immediately concerned, in which, while active, I am not at the same time passive, carried away by an internal impulse. On the contrary, an activity which is identical with my being is not indifferent, is necessary to me, as for example intellectual production, which is an inward necessity to me; and for that reason lays a deep hold on me, affects me pathologically. Intellectual works are not made, — making is only the external activity applied to them; — they arise in us.
To make
is an indifferent, therefore a free,
i.e
., optional activity. Thus far then — that He makes — God is entirely at one with man, not at all distinguished from him; but an especial emphasis is laid on this, that his making is free, arbitrary, at his pleasure. “It has pleased God” to create a world. Thus man here deifies satisfaction in self-pleasing, in caprice and groundless arbitrariness. The fundamentally human character of the divine activity is by the idea of arbitrariness degraded into a human manifestation of a low kind; God, from a mirror of human nature is converted into a mirror of human vanity and self-complacency.

And now all at once the harmony is changed into discord; man, hitherto at one with himself, becomes divided: — God makes
out of nothing;
he creates, — to make out of nothing is to create, — this is the distinction. The positive condition — the act of making — is a human one; but inasmuch as all that is determinate in this conception is immediately denied, reflection steps in and makes the divine activity not human. But with this negation, comprehension, understanding comes to a stand; there remains only a negative, empty notion, because conceivability is already exhausted,
i.e
., the distinction between the divine and human determination is in truth a nothing, a
nihil negativum
of the understanding. The naïve confession of this is made in the supposition of “nothing” as an object.

God is Love, but not human love; Understanding, but not human understanding, — no! an essentially different understanding. But wherein consists this difference? I cannot conceive an understanding which acts under other forms than those of our own understanding; I cannot halve or quarter understanding so as to have several understandings; I can only conceive one and the same understanding. It is true that I can and even must conceive understanding in itself,
i.e
., free from the limits of my individuality; but in so doing I only release it from limitations essentially foreign to it; I do not set aside its essential determinations or forms. Religious reflection, on the contrary, denies precisely that determination or quality which makes a thing what it is. Only that in which the divine understanding is identical with the human, is something, is understanding, is a real idea; while that which is supposed to make it another, yes, essentially another than the human, is objectively nothing, subjectively a mere chimera.

In all other definitions of the Divine Being the “nothing” which constitutes the distinction is hidden; in the creation, on the contrary, it is an evident, declared, objective nothing; — and is therefore the official, notorious nothing of theology in distinction from anthropology.

But the fundamental determination by which man makes his own nature a foreign, incomprehensible nature, is the idea of individuality or — what is only a more abstract expression — personality. The idea of the existence of God first realizes itself in the idea of revelation, and the idea of revelation first realizes itself in the idea of personality. God is a personal being: — this is the spell, which charms the ideal into the real, the subjective into the objective. All predicates, all attributes of the divine being are fundamentally human; but as attributes of a personal being, and therefore of a being distinct from man and existing independently, they appear immediately to be really other than human, yet so as that at the same time the essential identity always remains at the foundation. Hence reflection gives rise to the idea of so-called anthropomorphisms. Anthropomorphisms are resemblances between God and man. The attributes of the divine and of the human being are not indeed the same, but they are analogous.

Thus personality is the antidote to Pantheism;
i.e
., by the idea of personality religious reflection expels from its thought the identity of the divine and human nature. The rude but characteristic expression of pantheism is: man is an effluence or a portion of the divine being; the religious expression is: man is the image of God, or a being akin to God; — for according to religion man does not spring from Nature, but is of divine race, of divine origin. But kinship is a vague, evasive expression. There are degrees of kinship, near and distant. What sort of kinship is intended? For the relation of man to God, there is but one form of kinship which is appropriate, — the nearest, profoundest, most sacred that can be conceived, — the relation of the child to the father. According to this God is the Father of man, man the son, the child of God. Here is posited at once the self-subsistence of God and the dependence of man, and posited as an immediate object of feeling; whereas in Pantheism the part appears just as self-subsistent as the whole, since this is represented as made up of its parts. Nevertheless this distinction is only an appearance. The father is not a father without the child; both together form a correlated being. In love man renounces his independence, and reduces himself to a part: — a self-humiliation which is only compensated by the fact that the one whom he loves at the same time voluntarily becomes a part also; that they both submit to a higher power, the power of the spirit of family, the power of love. Thus there is here the same relation between God and man as in pantheism, save that in the one it is represented as a personal, patriarchal relation, in the other as an impersonal, general one, — save that pantheism expresses logically and therefore definitely, directly, what religion invests with the imagination. The correlation or rather the identity of God and man is veiled in religion by representing both as persons or individuals, and God as a self-subsistent, independent being apart from his paternity: — an independence which however is only apparent, for he who, like the God of religion, is a father from the depths of the heart, has his very life and being in his child.

The reciprocal and profound relation of dependence between God as father and man as child, cannot be shaken by the distinction, that only Christ is the true, natural son of God, and that men are but his adopted sons; so that it is only to Christ as the only-begotten Son, and by no means to men, that God stands in an essential relation of dependence. For this distinction is only a theological,
i.e
., an illusory one. God adopts only men, not brutes. The ground of adoption lies in the
human
nature. The man adopted by divine grace is only the man conscious of his divine nature and dignity. Moreover, the only-begotten Son himself is nothing else than the idea of humanity, than man preoccupied with himself, man hiding from himself and the world in God, — the heavenly man. The Logos is latent, tacit man; man is the revealed, expressed Logos. The Logos is only the prelude of man. That which applies to the Logos applies also to the nature of man.
But between God and the only-begotten Son there is no real distinction, — he who knows the Son knows the Father also, — and thus there is none between God and man.

It is the same with the idea that man is the image of God. The image is here no dead, inanimate thing, but a living being. “Man is the image of God,” means nothing more than that man is a being who resembles God. Similarity between living beings rests on natural relationship. The idea of man being the image of God reduces itself therefore to kinship; man is like God, because he is the child of God. Resemblance is only kinship presented to the senses; from the former we infer the latter.

But resemblance is just as deceptive, illusory, evasive an idea as kinship. It is only the idea of personality which does away with the identity of nature. Resemblance is identity which will not admit itself to be identity, which hides itself behind a dim medium, behind the vapour of the imagination. If I disperse this vapour, I come to naked identity. The more similar beings are, the less are they to be distinguished; if I know the one, I know the other. It is true that resemblance has its degrees. But also the resemblance between God and man has its degrees. The good, pious man is more like God than the man whose resemblance to Him is founded only on the nature of man in general. And even with the pious man there is a highest degree of resemblance to be supposed, though this may not be obtained here below, but only in the future life. But that which man is to become, belongs already to him, at least so far as possibility is concerned. The highest degree of resemblance is that where there is no further distinction between two individuals or beings than that they are two. The essential qualities, those by which we distinguish things from each other, are the same in both. Hence I cannot distinguish them in thought, by the Reason, — for this all data are wanting; — I can only distinguish them by figuring them as visible in my imagination or by actually seeing them. If my eyes do not say — there are really two separately existent beings, my reason will take both for one and the same being. Nay, even my eyes may confound the one with the other. Things are capable of being confounded with each other which are distinguishable by the sense and not by the reason, or rather which are different only as to existence, not as to essence. Persons altogether alike have an extraordinary attraction not only for each other, but for the imagination. Resemblance gives occasion to all kinds of mystifications and illusions, because it is itself only an illusion; my eyes mock my reason, for which the idea of an independent existence is always allied to the idea of a determinate difference.

Religion is the mind’s light, the rays of which are broken by the medium of the imagination and the feelings, so as to make the same being appear a double one. Resemblance is to the Reason identity, which in the realm of reality is divided or broken up by immediate sensational impressions, in the sphere of religion by the illusions of the imagination; in short, that which is identical to the reason is made separate by the idea of individuality or personality. I can discover no distinction between father and child, archetype and image, God and man, if I do not introduce the idea of personality. Resemblance is here the external guise of identity; — the identity which reason, the sense of truth, affirms, but which the imagination denies; the identity which allows an appearance of distinction to remain, — a mere phantasm, which says neither directly yes, nor directly no.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD.

The
personality of God is thus the means by which man converts the qualities of his own nature into the qualities of another being, — of a being external to himself. The personality of God is nothing else than the projected personality of man.

On this process of projecting self outwards rests also the Hegelian speculative doctrine, according to which
man’s
consciousness of God is the
self
-consciousness of God. God is thought, cognized by us. According to speculation, God, in being thought by us, thinks himself or is conscious of himself; speculation identifies the two sides which religion separates. In this it is far deeper than religion, for the fact of God being thought is not like the fact of an external object being thought. God is an inward, spiritual being; thinking, consciousness, is an inward, spiritual act; to think God is therefore to affirm what God is, to establish the being of God as an act. That God is thought, cognized, is essential; that this tree is thought, is to the tree accidental, unessential. God is an indispensable thought, a necessity of thought. But how is it possible that this necessity should simply express the subjective, and not the objective also? — how is it possible that God — if he is to exist for us, to be an object to us — must necessarily be thought, if he is in himself like a block, indifferent whether he be thought, cognized or not? No! it is not possible. We are necessitated to regard the fact of God being thought by us, as his thinking himself, or his self-consciousness.

Religious objectivism has two passives, two modes in which God is thought. On the one hand, God is thought by us, on the other, he is thought by himself. God thinks himself, independently of his being thought by us: he has a self-consciousness distinct from, independent of, our consciousness. This is certainly consistent when once God is conceived as a real personality; for the real human person thinks himself, and is thought by another; my thinking of him is to him an indifferent, external fact. This is the last degree of anthropopathism. In order to make God free and independent of all that is human, he is regarded as a formal, real person, his thinking is confined within himself, and the fact of his being thought is excluded from him, and is represented as occurring in another being. This indifference or independence with respect to us, to our thought, is the attestation of a self-subsistent,
i.e
., external, personal existence. It is true that religion also makes the fact of God being thought into the self-thinking of God; but because this process goes forward
behind
its consciousness, since God is immediately presupposed as a self-existent personal being, the religious consciousness only embraces the indifference of the two facts.

Even religion, however, does not abide by this indifference of the two sides. God creates in order to reveal himself: creation is the revelation of God. But for stones, plants, and animals there is no God, but only for man; so that Nature exists for the sake of man, and man purely for the sake of God. God glorifies himself in man: man is the pride of God. God indeed knows himself even without man; but so long as there is no other
me
, so long is he only a possible, conceptional person. First when a difference from God, a non-divine is posited, is God conscious of himself; first when he knows what is not God, does he know what it is to be God, does he know the bliss of his Godhead. First in the positing of what is other than himself, of the world, does God posit himself as God. Is God almighty without creation? No! Omnipotence first realizes, proves itself in creation. What is a power, a property, which does not exhibit, attest itself? What is a force which effects nothing? a light that does not illuminate? a wisdom which knows nothing,
i.e
., nothing real? And what is omnipotence, what all other divine attributes, if man does not exist? Man is nothing without God; but also, God is nothing without man;
for only in man is God an object as God; only in man is he God. The various qualities of man first give difference, which is the ground of reality in God. The physical qualities of man make God a physical being — God the Father, who is the creator of Nature,
i.e
., the personified, anthropomorphized essence of Nature;
the intellectual qualities of man make God an intellectual being, the moral, a moral being. Human misery is the triumph of divine compassion; sorrow for sin is the delight of the divine holiness. Life, fire, emotion comes into God only through man. With the stubborn sinner God is angry; over the repentant sinner he rejoices. Man is the revealed God: in man the divine essence first realizes and unfolds itself. In the creation of Nature God goes out of himself, he has relation to what is other than himself, but in man he returns into himself: — man knows God, because in him God finds and knows himself, feels himself as God. Where there is no pressure, no want, there is no feeling; — and feeling is alone real knowledge. Who can know compassion without having felt the want of it? justice without the experience of injustice? happiness without the experience of distress? Thou must feel what a thing is; otherwise thou wilt never learn to know it. It is in man that the divine properties first become feelings,
i.e
., man is the self-feeling of God; — and the feeling of God is the real God; for the qualities of God are indeed only real qualities, realities, as felt by man, — as feelings. If the experience of human misery were outside of God, in a being personally separate from him, compassion also would not be in God, and we should hence have again the Being destitute of qualities, or more correctly the
nothing
, which God was before man or without man. For example: — Whether I be a good or sympathetic being — for that alone is good which gives, imparts itself,
bonum est communicativum sui
, — is unknown to me before the opportunity presents itself of showing goodness to another being. Only in the act of imparting do I experience the happiness of beneficence, the joy of generosity, of liberality. But is this joy apart from the joy of the recipient? No; I rejoice because he rejoices. I feel the wretchedness of another, I suffer with him; in alleviating his wretchedness I alleviate my own; — sympathy with suffering is itself suffering. The joyful feeling of the giver is only the reflex, the self-consciousness of the joy in the receiver. Their joy is a common feeling, which accordingly makes itself visible in the union of hands, of lips. So it is here. Just as the feeling of human misery is human, so the feeling of divine compassion is human. It is only a sense of the poverty of finiteness that gives a sense of the bliss of infiniteness. Where the one is not, the other is not. The two are inseparable, — inseparable the feeling of God as God, and the feeling of man as man, inseparable the knowledge of man and the self-knowledge of God. God is a Self only in the human self, — only in the human power of discrimination, in the principle of difference that lies in the human being. Thus compassion is only felt as a
me
, a self, a force,
i.e
., as something special, through its opposite. The opposite of God gives qualities to God, realizes him, makes him a Self. God is God, only through that which is not God. Herein we have also the mystery of Jacob Böhme’s doctrine. It must only be borne in mind that Jacob Böhme, as a mystic and theologian, places outside of man the feelings in which the divine being first realizes himself, passes from nothing to something, to a qualitative being apart from the feelings of man (at least in imagination), — and that he makes them objective in the form of natural qualities, but in such a way that these qualities still only represent the impressions made on his feelings. It will then be obvious that what the empirical religious consciousness first posits with the real creation of Nature and of man, the mystical consciousness places before the creation in the premundane God, in doing which, however, it does away with the reality of the creation. For if God has what is not-God, already in himself, he has no need first to create what is not-God in order to be God. The creation of the world is here a pure superfluity, or rather an impossibility; this God for very reality does not come to reality; he is already in himself the full and restless world. This is especially true of Schelling’s doctrine of God, who though made up of innumerable “potences” is yet thoroughly impotent. Far more reasonable, therefore, is the empirical religious consciousness, which makes God reveal,
i.e
., realize himself in real man, real nature, and according to which man is created purely for the praise and glory of God. That is to say, man is the mouth of God, which articulates and accentuates the divine qualities as human feelings. God wills that he be honoured, praised. Why? because the passion of man for God is the self-consciousness of God. Nevertheless, the religious consciousness separates these two properly inseparable sides, since by means of the idea of personality it makes God and man independent existences. Now the Hegelian speculation identifies the two sides, but so as to leave the old contradiction still at the foundation; — it is therefore only the consistent carrying out, the completion of a religious truth. The learned mob was so blind in its hatred towards Hegel as not to perceive that his doctrine, at least in this relation, does not in fact contradict religion; — that it contradicts it only in the same way as, in general, a developed, consequent process of thought contradicts an undeveloped, inconsequent, but nevertheless radically identical conception.

But if it is only in human feelings and wants that the divine “nothing” becomes something, obtains qualities, then the being of man is alone the real being of God, — man is the real God. And if in the consciousness which man has of God first arises the self-consciousness of God, then the human consciousness is,
per se
, the divine consciousness. Why then dost thou alienate man’s consciousness from him, and make it the self-consciousness of a being distinct from man, of that which is an object to him? Why dost thou vindicate existence to God, to man only the consciousness of that existence? God has his consciousness in man, and man his being in God? Man’s knowledge of God is God’s knowledge of himself? What a divorcing and contradiction! The true statement is this: man’s knowledge of God is man’s knowledge of himself, of his own nature. Only the unity of being and consciousness is truth. Where the consciousness of God is, there is the being of God, — in man, therefore; in the being of God it is only thy own being which is an object to thee, and what presents itself
before
thy consciousness is simply what lies
behind
it. If the divine qualities are human, the human qualities are divine.

Only when we abandon a philosophy of religion, or a theology, which is distinct from psychology and anthropology, and recognise anthropology as itself theology, do we attain to a true, self-satisfying identity of the divine and human being, the identity of the human being with itself. In every theory of the identity of the divine and human which is not true identity, unity of the human nature with itself, there still lies at the foundation a division, a separation into two, since the identity is immediately abolished, or rather is supposed to be abolished. Every theory of this kind is in contradiction with itself and with the understanding, — is a half measure — a thing of the imagination — a perversion, a distortion; which, however, the more perverted and false it is, all the more
appears
to be profound.